Album Sweep: July 14, 2012 Part One....

Hey folks, it's time for the first half of this week's "Album Sweep", sampling the records debuting on this week's Top 200 Albums chart in Billboard magazine.

This week's big winner by just a little more than 1000 copies is hybrid-rock band Linkin Park, with their fifth set Living Things...

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Settling in for #2 is Maroon5, with their fourth studio album Overexposed...

At #4 is a compilation from Maybach Music Group called Self Made 2, and features rappers Rick Ross, Meek Mill, French Montana, Wale, and singer Omarion among others...(NSFW)

R. Kelly returns with his eleventh studio set and followup to Love Letter, another retro effort called Write Me Back at #5...

Pop/Punk group The Offspring just miss the top-10 as their latest album, Days Go By, enters at #12...

The winners of the last (and sadly, final) season of the Sing-Off, the most creative and cerebral of the myriad of singing competition shows out there, was Nashville's Pentatonix, and their debut EP, PTX: Volume 1, available only on iTunes, comes in at #14...

The attack of metalcore from last week continues today as Texas-based Memphis May Fire arrives at #16 with Challenger...

...while Sleeping With Sirens (such a pretty name for such a loud band) pop in a notch lower at #17 with the EP If You Were A Movie, This Would Be Your Soundtrack...and at least this is an acoustic effort for them..

Country singer Chris Cagle returns at #27 with his latest and first independently released album, Back In The Saddle...

French heavy metal act Gojira, from the southwestern corner of France in the town of Bayonne, take their name from the bastardized version of Godzilla. Their latest CD, L'enfant Sauvage, has gone top-10 in their home country, and enters in the US all the way up at #34...

Blues-rock group Blues Traveler hail not far from my home in Princeton, New Jersey, and they recently celebrated 25 years in the music business. Their tenth studio album, Suzy Cracks The Whip, is their first to chart in almost ten years, and it's in at #91....

...and I'm really a fan of British troubadour Joe Jackson, and his latest, The Duke, pops in at #93. It's a tribute to the jazz great Duke Ellington, and it features cameos from Sharon Jones, Iggy Pop, guitarist Steve Vai, and more..

And there you have it. Out of these, I would definitely recommend the Pentatonix, Joe Jackson, and Linkin Park sets. Tomorrow I'll bring up part two, with sets from Everclear, American Idol's Casey Abrams, and more.